Me and My Big Ideas

This is my kindergarten picture. It was the days of bobbi pins and curls and pretty checkered dresses with white collars and cuffs on the sleeves! Wish I looked that cute these days, some fifty years later.....time does take it's toll....ao does life.

Anyhow, I think I was a disappointment to my mom. She wanted a girly girl, I was a tomboy. She wanted me to have short hair, becuase I was so tender headed and I wanted it long and beautiful like Peggy's hair(blonde and glorious)! She wanted me to love my bride doll she had saved her green stamps for so long to get and I wanted to give her a haircut, so I did. She wanted me to like kittens, but just about fainted when I brought a handful of bare skin baby rats into the kitchen.

My mom, hated the farm, I adored it. Times were hard and she went to work in town when I was eight years old. I think the five of us made her want to run away. Who would have wanted to be around us, always scrappin' and hollerin', somebody cryin' and somebody screamin'. She had very little help from my farmer dad...he escaped on his tractor to the fields.

Sometimes Bill went with him....he learned to drive the tractor when he was about five.

I remember one time she and my Grandma, the one who slid down the ditch with us, wanted the five of us to take naps. The boys could lay in their room and talk til they fell asleep, but I had to have naptime in my own room all alone....no one to talk to, no one to get into trouble with except myself. So this particular day, I tried to talk my brothers into participating in the most brilliant plan ever thought of. I tore bits of magazine paper, wadded it up and stuck it in my eyes. It would be that sleepy matter you sometimes have when you have slept and wake up. My brothers couldn't make it stay in their eyes, so I proceeded downstairs to tell my gullible adult keepers, I had been asleep and successfully completed my nap. I don't know if the giveaway was the magazine bits in the corners of my eyes or the fact we had only been upstairs for about five noisy minutes. This day my brilliant plan met with failure.

My poor Mom....she wanted so much for her daughter.

Happy Sweetheart Day

This is a learning experience, loading pictures in the wrong order, LOL! Happy Valentine's day to all my friends! The colorful Card first imaged is for you! It was a lot of fun to make! The second and third images are of the card made for DH...I love making him cards, although guy cards are the hardest for me to deal with. But he is very supportive and always seems to like what I come up with...that's why he's a keeper!

The cards are made using the triple play technique from the February/March 2009 newsletter. The first colorful card features Vintage Valentine stamp set and background from one of SU's simply scrappin kits, retired, as is the stamp set. The second card for DH uses stamps from Artistic Outpost's You're a Keeper stamp sheet! They are wonderful images for the man/boy who enjoys fishing!

On my only successful fishing outing, one of the kids caught a catfish. We named him Boris, and because we named him, he had to go back into the water....none of us had the heart to do him in.

That is my only tall fish tale.

Hope you enjoy the day with your sweetie!

Happy Trails

This card was so much fun!! I saw this tutorial on Splitcoast Stampers last week and knew I would have to try it. All you do is seal any size envelope, cut one and a quarter inches off of one end...(That will be your closure piece). Stamp the larger piece of envelope however you wish to decorate it, run it through your crimper; that shortens the width to where it fits inside the closure piece. Then you can cut a piece of cardstock to fit into the crimped envelope, decorate it to match and voila, you have a decorated crimped envelope and card. I chose to stipple my envelope and used the Happy Trails set from the Angel Co. I am not adding any embellishments, as it is for my 9 yr old grandson. You never know how long anything stamped will last in their hands, but they do love to help me stamp. I've stamped with their help ever since they were babies. When Storm and Kane are over, they want to stamp. One of my stampin buddies would have heart failure if she were to see how inked up some of my blocks are, but it brings me joy to bring them joy and we have a good time. Some times we are all inked up and usually somebody decorates themselves in tape. And I can assure you, the smaller the hands the faster they are. When I have all three grandsons, it is a race for Grandma's eyes to keep on top of things, but we usually survive. Storm loves animals, so I hope he will like this card made especially for him! Not only will there be a card lurking inside with more stamped horse images, but there will be birthday dollars as well! I smell shopping coming on! Happy Birthday my little cowboy!

Miss Beth and Her Posse'

When my youngest brother passed away a year ago in December, we of course went through all the old pictures and several of the old black and whites, (none quite as cute as this photo), showed me next to the youngest brother and then the rest of the boys. We were a handful to say the least. It is interesting to note that although as oldest and youngest of the brood, we were the two most at odds as teens and adults. Not that he didn't rightly resent me. My mind was always turning and usually the four boys were my followers, and we were always in trouble. One of my efforts was to try and train a sweet little pony how to be ridden......Trust me at 12 or 13 I was no expert with horses. The only example I'd ever known was the man we bought the pony's mama from and he was a rambunctious and mean spirited man. Add his example to my own teen age meanness and determination that the pony was going to do what I wanted her to or else, it was little wonder that she reared in her rebellion, toppled backwards and shoved the saddle horn into my youngest brother's eye. None of my brothers ever forgave me that incident, or for the time we all suffered spankings because none would confess to the offense at hand. Shortly after our whippings, mind you, my guilty conscious got the better of me and I confessed.
Once, I wanted to skip school so bad that I talked my brothers into helping me walk the horses through the field so we could say they had gotten out and we just had to catch them......oh those naughty horses!! Of course none of the kids on the school bus believed us that the horses were free and one of the posse ruined his perfect attendance record (which he always got a school certificate until that year). Oops another black mark against me. So I guess when we get together at Christmas time and tell tales, is it any wonder I am the subject of many of these nasty memories? Did I bring it on myself or what?
Mom went to town to work when I was 8, Dad was always in the field and that left me and the four boys. And I was the boss, (or so I thought I had been appointed/annointed). During those growing up years, I slammed a kitchen door shut while trying to get the boys out to chore. The top of the door had a glass window and when the door stopped, guess whose arm didn't? I thought it was the coolest thing to see the inside of my arm and how the blood pumped through the veins.
And did you know that if you have fat because you are fat, it is snow white inside your body? Yes, I was over weight, but wait, that's another blog! Then there was that pony incident, and the incident where a hammer was dropped on my youngest brother's head.....yes, a miracle that he survived to be an adult. Well, Mom had enough of the phone calls and bad news and when I was thirteen, she hired a babysitter! Who wouldn't want to babysit the five darlings pictured above? We stole my dad's cigarettes so she could teach us how to smoke, the posse tied her to a chair one afternoon while I was out riding and refused to let her loose......and we learned a lot of fun words from her too. She didn't come back the next year. I really liked her.

Same Pallette, Different Day

Yes, I tried another technique from the February TJL; this one called Stringing You Along! It was great fun to do this weekend, in between unloading those pesky boxes. Again to me this technique speaks of a sunburst and the myriad

of colors dancing through the clouds. Again the stamp set is SU's Dreams Du Jour. Cardstock is SU Black, Taken with Teal and Whisper White. Inks used were Tempting Turquoise, Cool Caribbean and the Adirondack Big and Juicy, Happy Birthday ink pad. Image was colored with SU Stamp write Markers. Organza shiny ribbon is from Michael's.

They say the rodent saw his shadow which means six more weeks of winter. If tonight is any indication, we have temps that dropped 20 degrees in 2 hours and a cold brisk wind straight out of the north! I am ready to go snuggle under the flannel blanket my friend Michelle made for me. It's one of those tied together blankets and she found purple polka dots......Purple my favorite color. I don't know who loves it more, me or Max or Lucy, but we do tussle over it!

Some from my childhood probably wonder about my love of purple as when I was 5 my bedroom was purple and I was terrified to be in there. Well, it just wasn't fair I tell you. Mom and Dad shared their room and my four brothers shared a big bedroom and then there was me in this small bedroom on the back corner of the house. From my window there was a forever blinking red light on the tip of a tall tower way off in the distance......just bright enough and visible enough to be quite scary in the middle of the night. Another thing about that room I hated, was there was a back stairway that led down to the kitchen and I was always afraid someone was coming up those stairs.....and of course the room was painted lavender. I'm sure I would love that color today, but back then, it was a fearsome thing to sleep in that room. It took many a year to finally come to grips with that fear and come to love the shades of purple I love today. Maybe that room brought out my wild imagination. Let me tell you, I never lacked for imagination!

Well, until my next post, I hope your todays are as colorful as your tomorrows and equally delightful!

Color My World...

Finally a chance to stamp and to blog! Does it get any better than this? We've been cleaning house; if you can believe it, we still had boxes from our move a year ago and today, we went through them. Some of these boxes were stored from a previous move, say from 13 years ealier. Now we have organized boxes, four of which are for ebay. It all started when I decided to organize the unearthly mess in my craft room. It was such a mess, I could not stamp in the room at all. I could barely get to my supplies. When I stamped I'd carry what I needed to the kitchen or to a wooden tv tray...not much room there. On occasion one of the dogs would shred my tape before I'd notice she had it in those cute little white teeth of hers. Anyway, we made great progress today and so I treated myself to stamping this evening.

The card I am posting reminds me to be thankful for my eyes. I love color. I think that is why I love stamping so much. I am not an artist by any means, I barely passed art in ninth grade. But I do enjoy the world we live in and the majestic beauty of nature. I am in awe of those who have real talent and I love pretending to be artistic with my stamps. That's why I love Technique Junkie Newsletter so much . We got the February edition this week and it was full of inexpensive techniques for backgrounds and other card techniques. This card uses the Brayer Tapping technique and although I didn't doll the card up with any embellishments, (I'm tired), the color is fantastic and it's a really fun and easy technique to do. I used Stampin Ups Dreams Du Jour stamp set and markers to color my image, the rainbow inks used were the Happy Birthday (Big & Juicy) from Adirondack. I might try to add some embellishments tomorrow, so if I do, I will repost the improved version of the card.

I am so excited because on the 11th I will have the cataract I have had on my left eye for about two years removed and hopefully I will have complete 20/20 vision. Oh yeah! I can hardly wait to welcome color and vision back to both eyes! We'll see if this surgery improves my "artistic" abilities! LOL!

Take Me Home Country Roads

It is supposed to reach 41 degrees today and it is just beautiful outside. There is still snow on the ground, but the sun is warm and the air is clean. Days like today make me remember growing up in the country. I loved the country and being on the farm. We made a lot of memories my four brothers and I. One that I will never forget was bringing the cows in for milking with my Grandmother. She was a tall white haired woman and a very hard worker.

She must have been babysitting for the five of us and when it was time to bring the cows in, the six of us set out across the pasture to bring a herd of holsteins in for milking. Unbeknownst to us, one of the cows had just calved. Now holsteins are generally pretty gentle in my experience, but when they get a mean streak, it's a good one and the cow that had just calved was in no mood to be herded anywhere. Our Iowa pasture was like many others, with wide areas of sprawling grassland and huge cavernous ditches. This cow decided to give chase to Grandma and all five of us kids and we took off for our lives to outrun that angry mama! We made it through the grassy pasture to the edge of the biggest ditch on the property. First to slide down the embankment was Grandma with five of us in hot pursuit! Fortunately for us, the angry cow did not follow down the embankment! We rounded up the rest of the herd and made our way back to the barn in a very long out of the way journey and avoided the ill tempered mama and her beautiful calf. It would have been a sight to behold, the six of us shimmying down that ditch on our butts!! I still smile today just thinking about it.

Anyway, because of my farm background, I had to have Close to My Heart's "My Farm" stamp set. The card I'm posting is to capture the memory of those Holstein cows. I colored with SU markers and stippled the sun, sky and ground. The background piece is Camoflauge Technique from the October/November 2008 Technique Junkie Newsletter! I love Technique Junkie and if you don't subbscribe you should.

Here is the link to Pat's blog where you can find all the details about Technique Junkie. It is an awesome resource for the serious stamper/junkie. http://www.patstamps.blogspot.com/

Happy stamping!